The Rag: May 5th, 2008
"If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing."
~ Kingsley Amis
In this issue
Grub Gossip
Grub Street Gossip
Welcome to the latest installment of the Grub Street Rag, a newsletter of the Boston literary scene sent out every Monday by the post-it note poets at Grub Street's world headquarters. As always, if you are receiving this e-mail in horror, please advance to the bottom of the page to unsubscribe yourself.
Extra! Extra! Grub Street's in the news
If only there were a man standing on the corner in a jaunty newsboy cap, hawking copies of papers! Since there's not, you'll have to REEEEAD ALL ABOUUUUT IT online. First, check out the great writeup of the Muse and the Marketplace, "Novices Peek at Literary World" in Sunday's Boston Globe, which called the conference "a highlight of the Boston literary scene." Then, take a gander at this month's Writers' Digest, where your favorite writing center was featured as one of Boston's literary hot spots. (The P.S.: If anyone has a paper copy of the Globe article that you can mail to us, send it our way and we'll give you a $5 credit to a future class.)
What a prize
At the Muse & the Marketplace last weekend, we announced that two lucky people who filled out evaluations would be chosen at random to receive free seminars at Grub. And the winners are (drumroll...) Gerald Zeitlin and Sarah Banse. Congratulations to both of you!
Department of Congratulations
We've gotten so much great news from all of you lately that we have to do a Department of Congrats double header. First up, Grub instructor Mike Heppner has a new novella, available on his website, mikeheppner.com, called Man Talking. According to Mike, "It's about sex and writing and harrowing relationships, it's dark and funny, and I'm really proud of it." Next, Grub board member and mystery-novel maven Hank Phillippi Ryan has great news: her novel Prime Time just won the Agatha Award for best first novel! Next, Grubbie Rich Tenorio has a feature story published in the Jerusalem Post about American Jewish chaplains serving with the US military in Iraq. "Ten Weeks, Ten Stories" alum Sue Williams has a story called "Titania: True
Confessions" which she wrote in Stace Budzko's class coming out in an upcoming issue of Night Train. Grubbie Octavia Randolph has a great story in the current edition of narrativemagazine.com called "Ride" about Lady Godiva. And last but not least, Grubbie Lisa DeSiro was accepted to Lesley University's low-residency MFA program in June, and wrote in to tell us that she "wanted to credit Allison Adair for helping [her] prepare [her] writing sample last year." A palm-tingling round of applause to all of you. Keep that good news coming!
- Cheers,
- Whitney, Sonya and Chris
Grub Events
In addition to our ongoing workshops, Grub Street offers numerous writing-related events around town. See our website for a long-term view of all we do. Ready to sign up? Call us at 617.695.0075 and we'll get you on the list.
ONLINE WORKSHOP: Begins TONIGHT (May 5th), 9pm - 10pm each night, runs for five weeks, How To Get Freelance Work
Freelancer Eric Butterman and Grub Street present a 5-week online course on freelance pitching and writing. Learn how to write the best email pitches possible, be good on the phone and actually sell stories (one student sold $3,000 in freelance stories while a previous version of this class was still going on!). About Eric: He's been an editor on staff at Folio and Travel Agent magazine, and has written for Glamour, Men's Fitness and countless other titles. A weekly lecture is posted each Friday, followed by a one-hour online chat room meeting.
$195/170 members. To sign up: RSVP to online@grubstreet.org. This is REQUIRED. You will get an email back with the PayPal URL. All payment will be done via PayPal.
LUNCHTIME SEMINAR: Tuesday, May 6th, 12:30-1:15pm, Brown Bag Lunch Series
Do you work downtown and want to fit some writing into your day? Or do you have a schedule that gives you free afternoons instead of evenings? Bring your lunch and come on over to Grub Street for a Brown Bag Writing Workshop. In 45 jam-packed minutes, you'll meet fellow writers and get your creative juices flowing with some great writing exercises. Best of all, you'll leave lunch with some new ideas to ponder for the rest of your day, and beyond. These workshops are free and open to the public. Max. 15 students, email sonya@grubstreet.org to RSVP or call us at 617.695.0075.
FREE, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
TEENS: Saturday, May 10th, 12-4pm, YAWP! (Young Adult Writers Program) with special guest Todd Craig
Do you like to write poems, lyrics, stories, novels or screenplays? Come to YAWP, a free monthly teen writing workshop for Boston-area high schoolers like you. YAWP provides writing exercises in small groups, feedback from experienced writers, pizza and inspiration. You provide the energy to write, share your work, and try new things. This week features a very special guest appearance by author and DJ Todd Craig. In his session, Todd will talk about his experience of becoming a writer, and about how writing and overall education opened opportunities for him as well as lead the class in writing exercises and discussion. All teens in attendance will receive a free copy of tor’cha with its accompanying soundtrack CD including music written for and inspired by the book by Mobb Deep, Big Noyd, G3 and more. Please sign up in advance by emailing yawp@grubstreet.org or calling 617.695.0075.
FREE (includes lunch), Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
PARTY: Saturday, May 10th, 8pm, tor’cha Book Release (and dance!) Party at Grub HQ
Come celebrate New York City author and DJ Todd Craig’s cinematic debut novel, tor’cha, and its Boston-based publisher, Swank Books, with music from a trio of DJs, drinks, dancing, and Craig’s dynamic fiction Saturday, May 10 at 8pm at Grub HQ. Craig brings inner-city America to life in tor’cha, a street-smart coming-of-age tale of three young black men tempted and tested as they struggle to survive a tough urban environment. A product of the Queensbridge Housing Projects (and the Harvard Graduate School of Education), Craig incorporates the tones of hip-hop, movies, poetry, literature and faith to produce a vivid, graphic, and ultimately hopeful portrait of urban life. DJ sets will feature hip-hop, R&B, and deep grooves from Mr. Len (Smacks Records), deep house from Marcus Todd, and a special set of classic hip-hop from the author.
$5 admission can be credited toward purchase of tor’cha and its accompanying soundtrack CD, with music written for and dedicated to the book from Mobb Deep, Big Noyd, G3 and more.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, May 17th, 9-4pm each day, Designing and Launching Your Website and Blog
This course will show you how to set up a personal website and/or blog and craft a smart, attractive, user-friendly site. You'll learn how to register for a domain name, where to find a host, and how much it all costs, then discover different strategies and do-it-yourself tools for designing your site (some for beginners, others for those with a bit more tech savvy). We'll look at models for author websites, and you'll learn the basics of web design and usability, how to write for websites and blogs, and how to drive traffic to your site by optimizing it for search engines. We'll also workshop some blog entries of our own. You'll leave with many practical resources to help you establish an Internet home. Instructor Amy Marcott is a web writer and editor at MIT who also assists with web redesigns and incorporating new technologies into online strategies.
$95/$85 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday and Sunday, May 17th and 18th, 9-4pm each day, The Crafts of Poetry and Publication: Private Languages, Public Poems
"There is a moment when a writer goes from writing private poems in a public language to writing public poems in a private language," Mark Strand once said. In this weekend workshop with Scott Challener, we'll investigate this strange and lovely statement by reading great poems that seem successfully "public," but written in a "private language." Since writers (like editors) are readers, we'll wonder about how such poems live in a reader's imagination. We'll venture, too, into our own private languages, and write from them. We'll question their publicity and publish-ability, and along the way, talk some about the practical craft of publishing poems. This weekend workshop, then, will be part reading poems, part writing poems, part workshopping poems, and part talking about publishing them.
$195/$170 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday and Sunday, May 17th and 18th, 9-4pm each day, The Story Details
Asked for advice on how to move stories and novels forward, Charles Baxter has said, "Don't orphan your details." Concrete, specific details work to give a story life, and they are often what make them stand out in the publishing world. In this workshop, we will look at short examples from Baxter, Chekhov, Flaubert, and Ishiguro and examine how these authors create lively details of sight, sense, taste, touch , action and thoughts as springboards to further their plots. Using Baxter's The Feast of Love, an excerpt from Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, we will "borrow" their techniques as models to craft our own details of plot and character. By the end of the two days, we will hopefully have developed some tools to see our stories through to their best possible endings. Taught by Rosie Sultan.
$195/$170 members, Grub Street HQ, 160 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.
Be sure to check out our events calendar for a comprehensive view of upcoming events.
Spreading the Love
Grub Street wants to promote YOU! Please send events for consideration to whitney@grubstreet.org. Our apologies in advance if we cannot fit you in.
--READING: Tuesday, May 6th, 7pm, Margot Livesey
Margot Livesey, Grub Street Advisory Council member, and one of Boston's most beloved writers, will read from her new novel, The House on Fortune Street, which has been getting glowing reviews all around the country. Livesey is the acclaimed author of the novels Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, and Banishing Verona. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, and she is the recipient of grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Born in Scotland, she currently lives in the Boston area and is a writer in residence at Emerson College.
FREE, Porter Square Books, 25 White St, Cambridge.
--READING: Saturday, May 10th, 4pm, PEN New England and UMass Boston present The Graduate Writers of Boston Reading Series
Join us at the Boston University Bookstore for a student reading featuring student writers from Warren Wilson's MFA Program and guest host Daniel Tobin. Daniel Tobin is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poems, Where the World is Made, Double Life and The Narrows. Among his awards are the "The Discovery/The Nation Award," The Robert Penn Warren Award, The Greensboro Review Prize, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize, and a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
FREE, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 660 Beacon Street (at the Kenmore Square T stop) 5th Floor, The Reading Room.
--CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Howl Press (Deadline is June 1)
Howl Press is looking for topical essays (800-900 words) that are stimulating and thought provoking. Our audience is 35+, in the top 10% of earners and is interested in well-written material. Humor is always appreciated. This is a very unique, captive audience. Recyclable material is accepted. Pay: $200 - $250. Contact Lisa at lisa@howlpress.com. Please include your submission in the email instead of as an attachment.
This Week's Trivia Challenge
Welcome to the end of the e-mail, where, like a hot air balloon on a cold winter's night, we offer you the chance to win a prize. What two philosophers were both born today? Winner receives a gift certificate to any local J.P. Licks.
Answer to last week's quiz: No one has responded! Winner: Whitney, so far.